


Those Darned Robots

by saltslimes



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, a little fluffy I guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-28 19:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally wants out of the business, and Nightwing understands. So when there's a crazy robot rampaging in Wally's neighborhood and the team is busy, Nightwing opts to sort it out himself. Unfortunately it turns out to have more bite than he bargained for, and he soon finds himself on a doorstep he knows he isn't welcome on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Nightwing stared at the blinking screen in front of him. He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. Some crazy out of control robot attacking civilians: normal. Totally unremarkable, but it had to, it just had to be there. Two blocks from where Wally and Artemis (minus Artemis while they were still faking her death) were living. And sure, Wally could take that thing out no problem, it wasn’t a big deal by the looks of it. But he’d quit the hero business, and he was currently less enthused than ever before about it.

  
With his other team members engaged otherwise on a covert ops mission, and the other batkids on patrol with Batman, Nightwing had two options: ignore the robot, hoping Wally would don his old suit and take care of it (or someone else would show up to do it) or zeta other there and sort it out himself. He sighed again. He was tired, he’d been working late all week and yet there was still work to do.

  
Nightwing watched the robot toss a car into a nearby building and stood up, heading to the zeta tube. He hoped that Wally wasn’t home right now. As much as he missed his old teammate, he knew Wally would be none to happy to see him right now.  
When he arrived on the scene, the police were backed behind their cars. They look up gratefully at him as he flings a batarang at the robot.

  
“I can take it from here.” He tells them.

  
“Hey it’s bat…teen?”

  
“That’s Nightwing, you idiot!”

  
Nightwing rolls his eyes and swings himself over the car, dodging an array of lasers that the robot fires at him. It even does lasers. He’s rarely had the chance to fight a more cliché villain. The thought reminds him of Wally, who would have found this guy hilarious. Would have. Nowadays, probably not so much. He hurls another batarang and narrow avoids a charging attack. The thing has speed, he will say. It’s not poorly designed, just not well thought out either.  
He ducks an attack and is slammed into the wall. No real damage, except for his comm. earpiece slips out. It’s either lost or crushed, he doesn’t have time to care.

  
Nightwing dodges a laser attack and does a somersault, sliding under the thing’s legs, not missing the chance to smack two small explosives to them. He doesn’t calculate for it catching him as he slides past though, claws slicing across the skin of his shoulder blades. He pulls himself up and starts running just as its legs explode. He hurls one last batarang, which hits its mark, and the robot is just a clunking, cooling mess of metal.

  
Someone else can clean that up, he figures as he disappears into the nearest alley. It’s four blocks to the nearest zeta tube, and snow is beginning to fall, fluffy and light. It’s cold, and his shoulder is stinging, but it isn’t bleeding much, and cuts of such a kind are just one of the basic drawbacks of the job. He really gets why Wally gave it up.

  
Nightwing moves to step out of the alley and stops. The world is spinning, the bricks walls around him shifting as he looks at them. He shuts his eyes, but the dizzy feeling doesn’t recede, if anything, it worsens.

  
“Oh shit.” He hisses, twisting to get a look at his shoulder. He can’t really see it. The robot’s claws were tipped with something, he’s willing to bet. Maybe poison, maybe just a drug. At any rate, he needs to get back to mount justice. Or the bat cave. Maybe a hospital. Anywhere but here. He starts walking, but staying upright is getting harder and harder. Four blocks to the zeta tube should have been nothing, but it wasn't. He makes it two and stops to lean against a tree. Then he realizes where he is.

  
“Great.” Nightwing mumbles. He knows this street. In fact, he knows one of the houses on it all too well. He’s leaning on Wally’s neighbor’s tree. And his hopes were in vain, clearly someone is home. The lights are on. It’s just two more blocks, he tries to tell himself. But his legs are going to give out. He knows he can’t make it.

  
Wally stares at the TV screen blankly, clicking the remote. There’s nothing on. If Artemis was here she’d been struggling to keep it out of his reach and insisting on how much he would like this nature show if he’d just give it a shot. He’d watch it voluntarily right now, but it wouldn’t be anything like the same without her. That’s when the doorbell rings. It doesn’t do a nice “Ding-Dong” like it’s supposed to though; it does this really weird noise like the person at the door is leaning on it.

  
“Calm down, I’m coming.” He says, although he’s a little hesitant. No one should even be at his door, let alone someone who thinks it’s cool to announce themselves so insistently. He peers through the peephole and narrows his eyes. “Seriously?” He opens the door and grabs Nightwing, pulling him inside the house and slamming the door before he has a chance to speak.  
“Um, hi.” He says. Wally is about ready to hit the guy, who hey, is supposed to be his best friend.

  
“What the hell, Nightwing? You can’t show up at my damn house in full costume! I have neighbors you know.” He chides. Dick doesn’t respond. In fact, he barely seems to comprehend. He gives this tiny nod, and leans against the door, before wincing away from it, like he wasn’t thinking. Wally stops fuming for a minute to actually take a look at Nightwing. His hair is slicked down with snow or sweat or both, and he’s standing still but breathing long and slow, like he’s been running. His face is paler than Wally thinks he remembers.

  
“Dick? What are you doing here?”

  
“Wally, I wouldn’t—” Nightwing begins, but stops suddenly. He’s kind of… shaking, Wally notices.

  
“Wouldn’t what?” Wally spits. He’s still mad. About Artemis and Kaldur and… just everything. Dick cover’s his mouth with his hand and looks wide-eyed at Wally before pushing past him, bolting to the sink and retching into it. Wally is stunned for a second, because in all the years that he knew Dick as robin and then Nightwing, he’s never really seen the guy be sick. He always managed to uphold that Batman air of invincibility. But now he’s puking his guts into the sink, and his knees are shaking.

  
When he’s done his strength seems to give out. He lets go of the sink and sort of wobbles back, and Wally moves with his old speed to catch him without even thinking. He drags Dick over to a chair and pulls the trashcan over and drops it in front of him.

  
“Dick, what happened?” He asks, a little more gently. Dick sucks in a breath, wincing at the taste.  
“I’m sorry.” He coughs, adding, “I didn’t mean to come here.”

  
“Were you looking to talk to my neighbors?” Wally jokes, and then sobers up a little when Dick coughs more of his guts into the trashcan. “What were you doing here?”

  
“There was a crazy robot two blocks over. It should be on the news by now.” He says, spitting into the can and wiping his mouth. Sure enough, when Wally looks back at the TV. it’s switched to an urgent broadcast about a robot being apprehended moments earlier.

  
“What does that have to do with you? Or me?” Wally presses. Dick has his head in one hand, like he can’t really hold it up anymore.

  
“The team is on a covert ops mission. So either I had to take it out, or you. And I—the zeta tube is two blocks past your house.” He admits. Wally blinks at him. Nightwing is a batkid, and they don’t often do the whole admitting weakness thing. “I know you want no part in any of this, but I—” He’s cut off by another fit of retching, bringing up nothing but yellow bile. Wally softens. It’s really hard to stay mad at Dick. He reaches out to steady him, putting a hand on his shoulder. Dick winces and flinches away.  
“Dick, what happened to you?” Wally asks softly.

  
“Shoulder. I think it had poison on its claws.” He gasps, and then he’s slumping forward towards the trashcan full of sick. Wally jumps to his feet to catch him, and leans him forward, pushing the can away with his foot. God, the whole room smells like puke, he thinks. Wally examines the back of Nightwing’s suit. There’s a tear across the left shoulder blade, and a gash beneath it.

  
“You idiot.” He mumbles.

  
“Pfft. You’d do the same.” Dick slurs. Wally sighs.

  
“You wanna go to a hospital or what?” He asks. Dick groans.

  
“No. Mount justice.” Wally nods.

  
“Um, I don’t know how I’m gonna get you there. I guess I could carry you, but not in my civvies. I guess… Um. I guess I’ll suit up.” Dick makes strangled noise, and Wally sits him up quickly, checking him over. “What? You okay?”

  
“I did all this so you wouldn’t have to.” Dick moans. Wally snorts.

  
“You idiot.” He says fondly.


	2. Seriously Terrible Robots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wally struggles to help Dick, while being accosted with memories of the golden old days.

It takes Wally all of fifty seconds to be suited up and ready (he had to find the suit first) and he skids to a halt where Nightwing is sort of slumped in the chair. His hair is still slicked down to his forehead and his breath is still coming in ragged gasps, despite the fact that he’s sitting down. Wally brushes his hair back, only to be shocked by how hot Dick’s skin is. He can feel the heat through his gloves.  
“Hey, Dick, you still with me?”  
There is a moments pause where Wally feels his heart speed up, and then Dick groans.  
“Yeah,” he gasps. Wally sags with relief, and then tenses again.  
“Didn’t you say the team was on a covert ops mission?”  
“Yeah, they are.”  
“Then who’s at Mount Justice?”  
Dick gives Wally a sort of slow look before he answers.  
“No one.”  
“So I’m just supposed to dump you on the doorstep, alone?” Wally snaps. Dick makes a tired shrug.  
“There’s loads of antidotes there. I’ll work something out,” he says. Wally pinches the bridge of his nose and supposes that waiting around in the living room isn’t going to help anything. So he musters his strength and thanks his lucky stars he never stopped going to the gym (because Dick isn’t thirteen anymore, and he’s bulked up a lot) and decides to just heft the guy bridal style. Nightwing gasps in surprise, and Wally feels his face heat up. It’s not how he was expecting to spend his Saturday night, that’s for sure.  
“Just hang on tight, okay?” he says, and feels his face get even warmer. Urgh, now he’s acting like some kind of prince charming.  
Wally busts out the door and bolts towards young justice, going at top speed because he really doesn’t want to see any stories in the paper about Kid Flash carrying Nightwing through the streets like a princess. He’s actually halfway there when suddenly Dick grips his shoulder really tightly, so that it’s just about painful.  
“Holy crap, what?” Wally demands.  
“Stop.” Nightwing gasps, and normally Wally would have ignored it, but he thinks better of it and lurches to a halt. Dick rolls out of his arms and stumbles to his knees, retching bile into the dirt. Wally is sort of stunned into place for a minute, because in all their years working together he saw Robin show any kind of weakness a grand total of like, three times, and he certainly never saw him puke, but this was twice in one day, and he feels his stomach sink and the hairs on his neck prickly with concern.  
When he’s done coughing his guts onto the ground he sits back on his knees, new layers of sweat forming on his face, and Wally just leans over and picks him up, pulls him into his arms and bolts, heart picking up with terror. Dick is silent. He says nothing, just clings feebly to Wally’s uniform. And that is the scariest thing, because Dick Grayson has always—even with years of stealth training—been a motor mouth. Nothing like as bad as speedsters, but still.  
And as Wally runs, he dips his head just a little, trying to speed up, and finds Dick’s hair brushing his cheek. It’s damp with sweat, and it smells like puke, but under all that he can almost catch a hint of the leather and conditioner scent that is—was, Robin, when they were kids. He’d catch it in the air when he bolted past, soak it up whenever Dick fell asleep on his shoulder watching a movie. With everything, with retiring, and Artemis, and Kaldur, he’d forgotten that smell. Forgotten how it used to make his heart clench and his stomach flutter. The way no matter where he was it had smelled a little like home.  
“Hey. Stay awake. We’re almost there,” Wally says, his voice dull. Nightwing is getting limp in his arms.  
“I’m awake,” Dick says softly, his voice falling away in the wind. Wally almost laughs with relief. And then they are there, and he’s skidding through the back entrance and out through the kitchen and into the med bay.  
He lays Nightwing on the table, but he immediately starts sitting up, then grips his head and groans.  
“Oh my god it’s bright in here,” he complained. The lights are on, sure, but it isn’t blinding. Wally’s fingers itch to do something.  
“Stay focused. Antidote. We have to get an antidote.”  
“Um. Yeah. I got it—just, just give me a minute,” Dick says, wavering like he’s gonna fall off the table. Wally grabbs his shoulders and holds him in place. His heart is hammering now.  
“We don’t have a minute! Dick!”  
“I didn’t think it would be this—this bad,” Nightwing coughs, his eyes slipping closed and then flying open.  
“Dick! Stay awake! Goddammit, I can’t… I can’t lose you.”  
There is a long moment then, that Wally was never going to forget, where Nightwing’s eyes slid shut again, and he let out this sigh, like all that tension coiling his body up tight, that tension that seemed to have been holding him up ramrod straight for so long, since Kaldur left—since Wally left maybe—it seems to slip away, and Wally was afraid that he had lost him, lost him for real. He doesn’t know how long that moment lasts, but suddenly a voice from the door cries,  
“Nightwing?”  
And he whirls around to see Robin, the new Robin, whose name he had never been informed of, standing in the doorway with his cape half-off.  
“Robin?” he gasps. The new Robin hesitates only a moment, before tearing off the cape and dropping it, and hurrying forward.  
“What happened to him?”  
“Um, poison. He says he could find the antidote, and then he didn’t last that long.”  
“Where did the poison come from?”  
“Robot. Some kind of robot attacking like two blocks from my place,” he says unthinkingly. New Robin pulls up a screen from his glove, making him look uncannily like Dick used to. He taps on it hurriedly, but not in a panicked way.  
“Wally West, right? Yeah, okay. I can make a guess.”  
New Robin walks over to the cabinet and starts pulling out bottles and syringes. Wally lays Nightwing back down on the table and takes a step back, because he can see that Robin is doing a way better job than he could, and that he doesn’t seem to need help. Also, Wally’s hands are shaking like crazy. He doesn’t bother wondering how the new kid knows his name. All of Batman’s protégées know everything about everyone. That’s how he operates.  
“It’s fine, you can go,” New Robin announces, setting up an IV drip and not looking up. “I’ve got this.”  
“He’s gonna be okay?” Wally asked.   
“He’s tough.”  
“Believe me, I know,” Wally says. “I’m, ah, yeah. I’ll get going then.”  
New Robin doesn’t say anything. As Wally speeds away from Mount Justice, and tears he isn’t sure how to justify sting his eyes, he feels a lot of things. But mostly he feels guilty, for leaving Dick behind again.


End file.
